Halloween, and the livin' is ghastly

Ninjas, princesses and pirates, the ingredients of a perfect holiday

October 16, 2012|Daniel Patrick Sheehan | In The Burbs

A few days ago, I was sitting around with my younger daughter when she suddenly said, "Oh, look, the devil baby's back."

This type of utterance can worry a parent — did she see something I couldn't? — but it turned out she was talking about a television commercial for Party City, which advertises its Halloween offerings to the tune of Michael Jackson's "Thriller" and ends with a baby in a devil outfit booming out an unnaturally deep and wicked laugh.

Just like that, it was Halloween time again.

I feel sheepish admitting that I didn't have any sense of the season until a TV commercial flipped a switch in me, but it's true. I hadn't been paying any mind to how the leaves were turning and the sunlight slanting in that bewitching October way. And I hadn't noticed how the houses in the neighborhood, including my own, had been decorated with jack-o'-lantern stickers and hanging skeletons and inflatable caldrons abubble with potions.

I guess I'd been preoccupied. Now, though, I am full of the spirit, or spirits, and looking forward to the Emmaus Halloween Parade (the best around) and trick or treat, which this year is actually on Halloween in our little borough.

In that frame of mind, I made my annual pilgrimage to a Halloween shop to see what's hot in costumes and décor this year. In honor of the devil baby, I went to the Party City in Whitehall Township, where store manager Jennifer Adams told me just about what I had expected: The Avengers are selling big.

Of course they are. The Avengers include some of the classic superheroes — Captain America, Thor, Iron Man, the Hulk — and was a stratosphere-busting movie this year.

But the old classics are moving, too. What is Halloween without pirates? Look, too, for some distinctive reworkings of the Disney princesses. The tyke versions of Jasmine and Ariel and Pocahontas are still out there, but they have been restyled in larger, sexier versions for flirtatious adults. I will leave it to you to decide whether this was really necessary.

Elsewhere you might see a sombrero-wearing character called The Tequila Poppin' Dude; a standard-issue hippie with tie-dyed shirt and Ben Franklin spectacles; a "Shipwrecked Cutie"; a "Growling Gabbie."

"What I'm trying to go as is a marshmallow," said Nabeste Santiago, an 18-year-old from Allentown in search of that "Ghostbusters" classic, the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man.

They had it in stock, Adams said, along with a lot of Angry Birds and kid ghouls from Monster High.

It was almost too much, for some.

"You can only be one at a time," Milly Yocum told her year-old daughter, Harmony, who was pointing determinedly at costume after costume.

Some people make their own outfits, of course, and I noted how makeup and prosthetics have grown ever more sophisticated over the years. I saw a kit containing a ghastly applique throat wound and boasting "feathered edges for a realistic look." Another kit, called "Socket to Me," allows the wearer to look as if one eye has been torn out.

Bloody disgusting, yes, but all for fun. And that's what Halloween is about — fun.

Or so I thought until I returned to the office and opened my email, where I found a message from a public relations firm: "Scary True Stories of Halloween Eye Problems."

"I have doctors in your area ready to inform readers about why some of the worst injuries, abrasion to the cornea and eye infections happen this month! Contraband decorative contacts, eyelash glue, eye pokes from props, they all may cause serious problems and the list goes on!!"